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 Sunday, September 27, 2009
AlienWare M17x Laptop, is it worth the trouble?

Every 2 to 3 years I end up purchasing a new powerful laptop in order to get the latest and greatest of what is happening in the Laptop hardware market and run my applications and development tools very fast and furious :)

Well, I just received my AlienWare M17x this weekend and wow! that is one good looking laptop. Very nice indeed!

I purchased the laptop with Quad Core2 Extreme CPUs at 2.53MHZ, 8 Gig RAM DDR3 1333, Two Solid State Drives of 512 Gig (These things are awesome, HIGHLY recommended) and a lot of other top of the line things that make this laptop more expensive than several small cars on the market today.

When you spend this kind of money on a laptop, you expect everything to work right away with ease and richness to the point that it should be a delight.

Not in my case:

1- The NVIDIA driver was older that the one released on NVIDIA site and would not allow for multi monitor support.

2- I ordered the laptop with Vista Ultimate 64 bit which comes with a coupon for Windows 7 Ultimate.  I installed the Windows 7 Ultimate as soon as I received the laptop and God, was that a mistake. NVIDIA hates Windows 7.  Alienware Support said we can not support you with Windows 7 until it is released.  Someone needs to tell AlienWare tech Support that Windows 7 has been released for over 45 days, it is just not going to be in the stores until Oct 22nd. Very frustrating for a laptop that comes with a coupon to Windows 7 :(

3- I had to reformat the disks and reinstall Vista Ultimate 64 to be able to get the latest NVIDIA drivers that make the external displays work.

4- Under Windows 7, NVIDIA new driver does not install, Alien Fusion crash all the time (Power management app), AlienSense is very confused and many other weird things that just make you uncomfortable using this new car, I mean Laptop.

5- Even with the latest drivers under Vista 64 bit, I can not get multiple displays running at the same time. Support does not help and the forums is in really bad shape.  There are questions about NVIDIA drivers not working over a year old (ONE YEAR OLD) that no one from AlienWare, DELL or NVIDIA cared to answer.

So all in all, the laptop is very capable, beautiful and very powerful.  On the other hand, support is extremely poor, Windows 7 support is dismal and multi display (3 displays) does not work (although it says it should)

Do you have one of those? what is your opinion? am I missing something? is DELL really out of their minds selling this expensive laptop and offering Zero meaningful support?

posted on September 27, 2009  #    by Lino Tadros  Comments [10]
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Blogging from PDC in LA
Monday, September 28, 2009 9:32:34 PM UTC
Lino,

We must be on the same upgrade cycle. I just got a new 15" 2.66GHz Macbook Pro on Friday. I bought one for Daly for her birthday back in March and got Mary Ann a 13" Macbook Pro about a month ago. I was smitten. It is the finest laptop I have ever owned. It dual-boots Windows 7 flawlessly. If I have a problem, I take it to the Genius bar at the Apple store and they fix it. Awesome service.

On Mary Ann's I hosed the MacOS partition installing Windows 7, and so I had to call tech support to learn how to get the Windows 7 disk out and reinstall Snow Leopard. I was on hold about 5 minutes, then a vey nice, very intelligent American girl answered the phone and walked me through getting the OSX installer going. She also gave me some tips and tricks for solving boot situations.

So, I can't recommend a Macbook highly enough. Send back the Alienware and go get yourself a 17" Macbook Pro. It will also will run three monitors (two external and the built in one.)
Phillip Blanton
Monday, September 28, 2009 10:53:42 PM UTC
Hey Phillip,
How are you buddy!
Yeah, I hear you, I do have the MacBook Pro 17" where I do all my IPhone development and it also does have Windows 7 Ultimate on another partition. It is a nice machine and Yes Mac OS for some reason goes through a cycle that is mystery to Windows called "TESTING".

But honestly, if I can get this AlienWare to work on 3 displays, it is the finest machine on the market. Man! running on Solid State Drives is worth every penny.

Hope to see you soon
Lino
Lino Tadros
Monday, October 05, 2009 12:02:03 AM UTC
Hi Lino,

I just got my M17x - It comes with Vista...but it seems like quite the beast.

I am going to try to install window 7 on a USB ESATA drive using a USB key. Any suggestions ? Any progress on the NVIDIA drivers ?

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin Heffner
Friday, October 09, 2009 11:56:49 PM UTC
I've been using an M17x for several weeks now and the Windows 7 64-bit MSDN release is running great on it. I loaded the drivers from the Alienware Vista Drivers DVD and then updated them with the drivers from Dell's website.

I have had no problems with multiple monitor support so far in Windows 7. I swap back and forth between the laptop display and my 22" external display and sometimes run them both. Be glad to answer any questions if it will help ya.

Chad Sircy
Saturday, October 10, 2009 2:36:13 PM UTC
Thanks Chad,

I got it working. It was not easy. Alienware (Dell) support was extremely bad!
I had to download a driver from a game board somewhere that include an untested driver for NVIDIA that will allow this to work (I had to manually modify INF files to get even that to work).
I don't understand how do they expect people that pay $6200 for a laptop to have to do all of this by themselves????
I installed Windows 7 on my machine and support would not even talk to me, although I purchased the laptop with the Windows 7 update and it came with a coupon. They said it is not out yet, which is so sad to hear from a company like Dell as Windows 7 has been released to manufacturing over 2 months ago.
Anyway, I had to collect different pieces from different sites and I am back to what I need to be.
Thanks for the offer to help Chad
Cheers
Lino
Lino Tadros
Saturday, October 10, 2009 9:00:50 PM UTC
Glad to hear ya got it. Cheers!

I talked to my companies Dell rep. about the Windows 7 coupon and driver support. Turns out it isn't Dell/Alienwares fault. I was told that Microsoft is asking them to hold off on releasing "official" Windows 7 drivers until the 22nd.

By the way laptopvideo2go.com has been great about posting experimental/beta drivers for the M17x just in case you haven't found that site yet.

I wish i had the SSD's you have to test out in Windows 7 but work couldn't justify the cost of those bad boys.

Have a good one.


Chad Sircy
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 7:05:12 PM UTC
Hi Lino,

Do you remember the exact steps to get the external displays to work??

I just bought a M17x - installed Windows 7 64 bit - and CANNOT GET THE FU..... external monitor to work. I have spent several days on this and are getting a desparate.....

By the way. Where do you find your account-number to create my help account on Alienware - (this should be easy but I can't find it ;-(
Morten Overgaard
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 7:13:44 PM UTC
I too have the , with dual 280M video. I was able to get windows 7 ed, but had to use the 186 drivers from NVidia to get dual monitors working. Also, if you use SLI be sure to run your game full screen and turn off desktop composition (Aero 3D). You can do this in the shortcut your game, on the "Compatibility" tab in the properties.

The main issue I have currently is with the audio in game (World of Warcraft). Periodically, I'll get weird audio stuttering/crackles. It'll also cause the frame rate to stutter. I tried the latest *Vista* drivers from the support site but the problem remains.

We'll see what happens with the driver downloads come Oct 22.

Peace!
Kris Williams
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 7:22:26 PM UTC
@Morton

If you got the drivers from laptopvideo2go.com you'll need to copy the .inf file out of the additional_infs.zip file. You should find it in the unzipped installation directory. The 186.91 driver download from NVidia doesn't have support for this system in the installer by default, and the beta driver 186.11 driver from Dell is crappy, don't install it.
Kris Williams
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 8:50:39 PM UTC
@Kris

The drivers download you mention - is this a download from alienWare or is it from Nvidia?

Thanks in advance

regards Morten
Morten Overgaard
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